er wonder if his
school might not develop into a collection of oddities, but all the
pupils that she saw were not only the sons of gentlemen but obviously
normal. She felt that their influence, seconding the control of
Considine, must surely have a stabilising effect upon Arthur, and was
content.

During the two days of her visit she still found Gabrielle a little
puzzling. She couldn't quite believe that her extreme quietness and
reserve were nothing more than simplicity. Knowing nothing of her
origins she did not realise that Gabrielle was actually shy of her, and
that this, and nothing else, explained her air of mystery. On the last
night, however, feeling that after all Gabrielle was the only woman in
the house in whom she could confide, she overcame her own diffidence,
and told her the whole story over again from a personal and feminine
point of view. Gabrielle listened very quietly.

"I'm so anxious that I felt bound to tell you, just in the hope that
you'd be interested," said Mrs. Payne. "One woman feels that it takes
another woman to understand her. If you had children of your own,
you'd understand quite easily what I mean."

"I think I do understand," said Gabrielle.

"There are little things about which I should be ashamed to worry your
husband. I wonder if it would be asking too much of you to hope that
you would sometimes write to me, and tell me how he is? Naturally I
can't expect you to take a special interest in Arthur, more than in
others----" She found it difficult to say more.

"Of course I will write to you if you want me to," said Gabrielle.

Mrs. Payne, impulsively, kissed her.

XIII

Gabrielle fulfilled her promise. All through the first term, while
autumn hardened into winter, at Lapton a season of sad sunlight, she
kept Mrs. Payne posted in the chronicle of Arthur's progress, and these
dutiful letters comforted his mother in her unusual loneliness at
Overton. They were not particularly interesting letters, and they
never brought to her any announcement of the long-awaited miracle, but
they gave her the assurance that some other woman had her eye on him,
and this, for some strange reason that may have been explained by
Arthur's dependence on her through her long widowhood, comforted her.

In the beginning Gabrielle interested herself in Arthur simply for the
sake of Mrs. Payne; she had been touched by the mother's anxiety and
found her, perhaps, a little pathetic; but